Chapter 16: Stargaze: Pegasus

"You know, I really don't think you're supposed to be here this late," Hermione said climbing up the stairs of the astronomy tower, "it's 2 past midnight. You could get in serious trouble."

"Eh, I won't get caught, I got an invisibility cloak. Speaking of getting into trouble, what are you doing here? How did you even follow me?"

Hermione pulled out the map. "You were gone in the middle of the night, so I used this to find you. I thought we had agreed that you weren't going to run off leaving me worrying any more. I'm disappointed, Harry."

"I didn't run off into danger. I couldn't sleep so I took my cloak and went up here to look at the stars. They're beautiful, aren't they?"

Hermione looked up, at the clear rural Scottish night sky. Far from the next major city, and with the dim lights in Hogsmeade and Hogwarts mostly out this late, there was practically no light pollution obscuring the stunning view.

"Yes," she said, "They are. We don't really get to appreciate it in Astronomy when we're doing classwork."

"True, we're always so busy getting all the assignments done before the end of the class, we never have time to just enjoy the view."

We were both silent for a while..

"Nature is beautiful," I eventually mentioned, "and sometimes a little cruel. Most people live in big cities where they never even see their own galaxy. Even those who can enjoy a view like this, they can't see the true beauty of it. The way the retina in the human eye works, there's a layer of neurons and blood vessels in front of the actual rods that detect light. Photons travel millions of lightyears, manage to hit an observing eye, only to collide with a nerve fiber less than a millimeter away from the cell that could've sensed it."

"It does sound a little tragic, if you say it that way. To come that far but to fail so close..."

"A fascinating quirk of biology. All vertebrates have eyes with inverted retinas. But cephalopods evolved their eyes completely independently, and they have retinas the right way around."

Hermione turned around and took a closer look at my face, noticing the lack of glasses. "Don't tell me you did.."

I nodded. "I asked Professor McGonagall last week, and finally managed a partial animagus transformation on my eyes. Not as useful as I'd hoped, I'd get blinded way too easily by anything bright if I did this in a combat situation, but it does make the night sky absolutely stunning. I can even see polarisation a bit. Might be useful if I go for a career in quantum optics."

Hermione laughed. "Yeah, it might be useful in that case. But as much as you're trying to downplay it, I am a bit jealous that you can see better than I can."

"True, it's a shame this isn't something everyone can do."

A few minutes of silent stargazing later, I pointed at the Pegasus constellation.

"You see the faint star on the right of the square? In 1995, astronomers noticed that its colour shifted a tiny bit every few days. It was barely noticeable, but regular like clockwork. They did the calculations, and concluded that the only explanation was a half Jupiter sized planet orbiting around it, pulling it back and forth and causing the shift."

"You know, you always praise me for having an amazing memory, just because I only have to read a book twice to memorise it all. But then you remember things that haven't even happened yet in vivid detail."

"Well, it was the first planet outside our solar system ever found. 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics. They found thousands of other planets later on, they're apparently quite common. To be honest, I only really remember the details because someone made a catchy song about it. Pegasi, 51b, planet discovered, around a far, main sequence star, and I forgot the rest."

"Do you think that with planets being common we might not be alone in the universe?"

"Maybe. I only know vaguely what's going to be discovered in the next twenty-five years or so, that's as far as it goes for me, and there wasn't any alien life discovered then. But it's possible. Thinking about it, if aliens do exist, do you think they'd have magic?"

"It'd be weird, if muggles made first contact and discovered alien magic before human magic."

"It'd also be weird if aliens didn't have it. It could also save us if they turned out to be hostile like Hollywood aliens."

"You think wizards on broomsticks could fight off UFOs?"

"Maybe. Or maybe something as simple as a jar of everlasting fire could be just what NASA needs to power a space fighter."

-HP-HP-HP-

It felt great, just watching the stars and talking about sci-fi and things far far away and just not thinking about Voldemort for hours. The day after, though...

Note to self: Don't spend the entire night stargazing when you have Defence class the next day. You will regret it.

Fortunately, nothing worse than losing points for not paying attention occurred, but it was a miserable day.

-HP-HP-HP-

"Potter," Snape greeted me as I entered Dumbledore's office, "the Headmaster just told the true story of the troll incident. Be assured that I wouldn't have believed it if it had been anyone but you."

"Thanks."

"It wasn't meant as a compliment, Potter. Nobody else would have been crazy enough."

"I try. So, what's the issue?", I asked Dumbledore.

"I have made some progress determining the nature of Quirinus's possession issue. I ran some tests, as far as I can tell it's impossible to get Voldemort out of him."

"Then we lock up both," Snape demanded.

"Unfortunately, while we can't separate the two, Voldemort could choose to leave as a spirit at any time. The only thing stopping him from escaping beyond our reach is his assumption that he has not been discovered yet, and his unwillingness to abandon his mission."

"Any progress figuring out a way to capture or harm a spirit like that?", I inquired.

"I found a spell that might be able to stop him from leaving his host for a few seconds,'' Dumbledore mentioned. "As for harming or even killing him, nothing so far. But I know a lot more about his nature than last week."

"So we're just going to keep the Dark Lord in the castle until we find something?", Snape asked sharply.

"Looks like that's the plan, unless you can think of something else."

"One point from Ravenclaw for disrespectful language towards a teacher, Potter."

"Oh come on, stop it. Out there," I pointed at the door, "In the castle we're teacher and student. You can stride around and take points all you want there. But here, we're co-conspirators planning the defeat of the Dark Lord Voldemort. Or at least that's how I see it. Now, what's the backup plan for the worst-case scenario, Voldemort manages to get out of here despite our efforts?"

"Should Voldemort escape, regain a body and make moves to gather his followers, I will reassemble the Order of the Phoenix."

"And I'll probably be the spy again."

"Do we have a plan in case to defeat a group of Death Eaters threatening the country?"

"Let us hope it won't come to that, Harry."

"Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. And the worst is another full scale war like in the 70s. I've tried to nudge some things so that if something like that happens, we're a bit better off. For example, I asked Professor Flitwick to run the duelling club so that everyone gets a chance to learn to defend themselves against other wizards regardless of how good or bad the annual Defence professor is."

"I would have thought that it was just to show off, with that show duel with Malfoy, Potter?"

"That too. I also spent the last two years making all kinds of plans and strategies for all kinds of possible scenarios, and I hope we won't have to use any of them."

Mostly ripping off ideas from internet authors from another universe. Interdimensional copyright isn't a thing, right?

"It saddens me that you'd spend your time planning war at your age."

"Yeah, it's not great, but I got to do something. Boy of the Prophecy and all. Anyway," I pulled out a folder from my bag and opened one page, "here's an example of what I came up with. Example plan #15, Code name Celestial Canidae.

Situation: Voldemort returns to the power of a very powerful dark wizard, practically impossible to beat in a duel, and has a small army of loyal followers. We have a small resistance group.

Assumption one: We have the ability to protect a house with sufficiently good defences to withstand an attack by Voldemort for at least ten minutes, and we have some monetary resources available.

Step one of the plan: Find an empty island a decent distance away from anything important, that muggles won't miss if we hide it.

Step two: Build a simple house there, fortify it as well as possible, and block apparition and portkeys in as large an area around it as we can. As far as everyone on our side is concerned, that's the new headquarters.

Step three: Find a set of vanishing cabinets that allow transport, and put one on the island and one in another safe location as an escape route. That part of the plan has to stay a secret for everyone but the most trusted of us to make sure that Voldemort won't find out about it, even if he has a traitor in our group.

Step four: Once the island is protected well enough, use it as a meeting place for everyone on our side.

Step five: Eventually make sure information about the location and the time of the next meeting leaks to Voldemort in a believable way.

Assumption two: Voldemort would probably attempt to wipe us all out by attacking our headquarters with everything he has. Since it's an island with apparition and portkeys blocked, he'll have to attack on brooms.

Step six: The moment we notice Voldemort is attacking our meeting, we evacuate everyone through the vanishing cabinet. The defences have to hold just a few minutes for that."

"Let me guess," Snape interrupted, "the moment everyone's out you plan to unleash fiendfyre on the Dark Lord and his army, who can't apparate away?"

"No, fiendfyre is too slow. My plan was to blow the entire island up. We fill the island with tons of highly explosive materials, the most volatile potions you can find, maybe we could get some dynamite and see if duplicating charms work on it, then once everyone of us is evacuated and Voldemort is just about to break in we set it all off."

Snape nodded. "That works too."

"Harry… You can't be serious."

"No, Sirius is my new father. Sorry. Well, if there's one thing Voldemort deserves, it's a massive explosion in his face. The only way to kill a powerful dark wizard is to finish him in one shot before he can react and defend himself. And if you don't think it'd work, I also have plan 15b: Operation Gandhi."

"Are you serious, Potter? You think you can peacefully protest the Dark Lord?"

"No, it's exactly the same as plan 15, except that we use the current political chaos in Soviet Russia to pilfer a small nuclear bomb, and use that."

"Harry!"

-HP-HP-HP-

Okay, maybe I should have presented one of my more sensible plans I ripped off serious fanfics instead of jumping straight to number 15.

"Hey, Harry! Could you help me with something?"

"Sure, Hermione! What's the problem?"

"I'm trying to start a movement to demand freedom for house elves. What do you think would be a good slogan? I just can't come up with a decent acronym."

"Okay, umm, first of all, don't."

"What? Why?"

"As far as everyone knows, or believes to know, the house elves are happy the way things are."

"Only some of them," Hermione immediately interrupted, "and even those only because they don't know a better life!"

"True, but it doesn't matter. Starting a movement, that's politics, and in politics it's not important what's true, but rather what people think is true."

"Then we got to tell them! That's exactly what I'm trying to do!"

"Bad idea. The majority of the population assumes that the house elf situation is fine, but doesn't actually know any house elves. The part of the population that has elves and could know has a strong interest to keep things the way they are. That part is also where most of the money is."

"But it doesn't matter where the money is, what matters is what all people think, and most people don't profit off house elf slavery so if I inform them it's wrong, they'll listen!"

I got a piece of paper from my bag and scribbled down some numbers.

"Let's do a quick calculation. The population of magical Britain is about 10 thousand people, including squibs and muggle family members that know about magic, let's call it 15. Assuming an average of 3 per household, that's 5 thousand households as potential customers for the Daily Prophet. At 5 knuts a copy, dirt cheap, their potential revenue if every household had a subscription is 25 thousands knuts a day, or about 50 galleons. Let's assume no printing or distribution cost, because magic. Given the amount of articles and the amount of work to write each article, there's at least 100 work-hours of researching, writing, editing, taking pictures, interviews, et cetera, in each daily edition. Which gives the typical Prophet employee an hourly wage below half a galleon, before taxes. The Prophet is a private company, they don't get government subsidies. But they're still the only paper because they're cheaper than anything else. So, given these numbers, how can they possibly run the company and pay their journalists a decent wage on 50 galleons a day?"

"I don't see how that's important."

"Look, the math doesn't work out. Unlike their name suggests, they can't possibly make a daily profit. And why would the owners keep the company if it keeps making losses? It doesn't make sense. Unless they get something else out of it."

"You're not saying… They wouldn't. They're a newspaper."

"They wouldn't, what? Compromise their journalistic integrity and print whatever their owners, eleven of the richest wizards in the country, all from old families, want? Such as 'Crazy muggleborn wants to free house elves - Doesn't even know that house elves like to work'? Because that's exactly what would happen if you started a movement called 'Free The Elves', and if you were lucky."

"And what if I was unlucky?"

"Then it'd be the other m-word. No, if you want to have a serious chance to free the elves, you need to take a different approach. You need to make them work for you, against their own interest, without realising it."

"And how do I do that?"

"Here's how I'd do it. Start with a simple message that virtually everyone can agree on. Let's say ban torture. It's already practically illegal in almost all forms, but there's no blanket ban so far, so it'd be something people who don't know much about politics would support immediately while politicians would see it as easy publicity to support you with no negative consequences. Then, once your movement picked up some momentum, say how unfair it is that a lot of legal protections that apply to humans don't apply to people who are almost human, like veela, everyone loves veela. Demand that it becomes illegal to torture veela, then expand to centaurs, goblins, all the other almost-human intelligent beings, and nobody can really speak out about you because nobody wants to be seen as supporting torture. By the time you add house elves to the list it would seem like an afterthought, and the rich house elf owners already publicly supported your movement and it'd be awkward to retract that support then. That'll make it illegal to abuse house elves, and nobody would even know it was the goal all along. Then add other human rights to all intelligent beings once you've got a good reputation and lots of public support. It'd be a pretty massive undertaking though, so it'd take years until you got to a point to demand fair pay for elves, but it's better than putting a giant target on your back saying 'ruin my reputation please, I'm a threat to your profits'."

AN: The song referenced in the beginning is "Whole New Worlds", available on YouTube.